Bolivar: American Liberator

by Arana, Marie

  On December 14, Bolívar addressed the members of Congress, calling for the union of Venezuela and New Granada and the creation of a new American nation that straddled the continent from sea to sea. This was the dream for which he had labored on both sides of the Andean cordillera—a goal, he said, he had set almost a decade before, during his earliest fighting days. By the time the legislators voted, that sprawling territory would include the former colony of Quito and embody a remarkably diverse landmass that joined jungle to mountain, valley to desert, and bustling cities to desolate plains. He called it the Republic of Greater Colombia.

  The eloquence of Bolívar, the enthusiasm of Zea—the sheer optimism of the moment after what had been such a querulous time—were convincing enough for the beleaguered legislators. On December 17, Congress passed a law joining the former Spanish colonies. In one masterful stroke, Bolívar made Venezuela, a colony that had been struggling fitfully against Morillo, part of the victorious republic that Morillo had just lost. Bolívar and Zea were soon elected president and vice president of that new, larger nation. Santander was confirmed vice president of the state of New Granada; and Roscio, one of the original signers of Venezuelan independence, was named vice president on the Venezuelan side. In their supreme confidence, the congress left the question of Quito’s command to be resolved when Bolívar had actually confirmed its liberation. Tired of being traded capriciously between the viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada, Quito had asserted its independence early. But whether the people of Quito or New Granada wanted to be part of Greater Colombia was not even considered. For now, what was important—despite all apparent obstacles—was momentum and revolutionary will.

  BOLÍVAR LEFT ANGOSTURA AT THE end of December, eager to press on against the Spaniards while he had them on the defensive. His title of president and Liberator secure, he had the complete loyalty of his officers, and he ordered them now to take strategic positions in the north, along the coast, with all eyes on Caracas. Arismendi would resume control of Margarita; Urdaneta would march toward Caracas; Soublette would escort a fresh infusion of British soldiers down the Orinoco; Bermúdez would command them in the Apure; and Páez would prepare a major offensive to the west. They would squeeze Morillo’s army until it had nowhere to go but home.

  Bolívar could hardly know it, but he would receive most help from Spain itself, where a major expedition of reinforcements was suddenly halted by a sharp turn in the country’s politics. Morillo had asked King Ferdinand for twenty thousand soldiers and a fleet of forty-seven warships to rout Bolívar decisively and drive “all his pirates” from the Caribbean. The Ministry of War had agreed to provide Morillo with at least four thousand of those troops, and had gone so far as to ask Russia for help in the naval transports. But on January 1, 1820, the men who were in Cádiz waiting to be shipped out to America rose up in violent rebellion. Many were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars and, even though they had expelled Napoleon from their shores, they had managed—like much of Europe—to absorb French revolutionary ideas of freedom. They wanted no more of Spain’s iron-fisted ways and were deeply angered by King Ferdinand’s abolition of the liberal 1812 constitution, whose very goal had been to curb the excesses of a corrupt king. Now they demanded the immediate restoration of the constitution; moreover, they refused to serve in a war effort against the Latin American rebels. A frightened Ferdinand, keen to avoid following his French counterpart to the guillotine, could only comply. On March 9, he reinstated the Cádiz constitution and promised a more equitable political system. The message went out to General Morillo: no reinforcements would be sent; instead, he was to negotiate with the rebels and assure them that, like any other Spanish citizens, they would be granted all freedoms implicit in the constitution. It was proof of how little Spain understood America. By now, Bolívar’s rebels were well beyond listening to any king; and they certainly would never accept any constitution they themselves hadn’t written. When Morillo received Madrid’s instructions, he threw up his hands. “They’ve gone crazy!” he told his officers. “They have no idea what they’re saying.”

  Morillo could see very clearly that there was no good way out for him. His reports to the Ministry of War grew gloomier by the day. Madrid’s decisions, he wrote his minister, “have dashed this army’s most fervent hopes and reduced us to total ineptitude and impotence.” Being a man of considerable political acumen, Morillo understood that the constitution of 1812 could not fail to have a positive influence on his country, but what was progress in peacetime was not always progress in war. By June, Morillo was forced to publish news of the restoration of the Cádiz constitution. He did this with a heavy heart, knowing full well what it meant for his weary soldiers. How to tell such men, who were far from home and had risked their lives for no pay whatsoever, that they could not aspire to some remuneration? As the constitution spelled out and was reprinted for everyone to see in the Gaceta de Caracas, the army was not to touch, much less appropriate private property. The old assumption that soldiers could take whatever booty they could find was now actionable by law. Morillo continued to rule in Caracas and the coastal highlands, but he could see that his war was over. He needed to find a way to cause the least damage to his career.

  Morillo may not have known it, but at that moment he had the military advantage. Bolívar was still struggling to fortify the patriot army. Returning to Bogotá, the Liberator knew that he had the support of the Granadan people, but all the adoration and good cheer had not translated into troops. For every republican recruit, there were dozens of soldiers who had deserted out of sheer hunger. The people were tired of bloodshed, dispirited after a long decade of ruin and upheaval. A crippling stupor had invaded the republican soul. Surveying his fellow citizens, Bolívar despaired at their failure to understand what it took to make a democracy. There was bad faith all around, a corrosive lack of will, and the ideals and virtues he spoke of in his speeches seemed to be in scant evidence among his listeners. As he said to Santander: perhaps the poisons of colonialism had gone too deep. “The more I think about it,” he confided in a letter, “the more I am convinced that neither liberty, nor law, nor luminous enlightenment will transform us into peace-loving people, much less into republicans and true patriots.”

  As he worked to consolidate the republic, he made it clear that the black slaves of Greater Colombia were to be free; that he expected them to serve in the liberating army; that it was the height of inequality, not to mention a form of genocide, for whites to be killed in war while blacks were denied the opportunity to show equivalent patriotism. It had been all too evident, as he made his way through the ravaged land, that almost half the white population of Venezuela had been lost to the revolution. But beyond the notion that equal rights demanded equal sacrifices, Bolívar believed in the inherent logic of liberty: “any free government that commits the folly of allowing slavery,” he wrote to Santander, “can expect to be punished by revolution.” Santander was of a different mind. He saw the freeing of slaves as having grave consequences—both social and economic—for the country. He was careful to avoid argument with the Liberator, but a rift began to grow between them: the president and vice president were learning that they had fundamental disagreements about how America should be free.

  There were problems, too, with Páez. The Lion of the Apure continued to be recalcitrant, unreliable. Ignorant of military protocols, he awarded his men titles and privileges far beyond his authority to do so. He was petulant, difficult; he countermanded orders, balked when he was told to follow the rules, complained constantly about money. But Bolívar was all too aware of his value. Loath to provoke Páez to battle, the Spaniards had given the republicans a wide berth. The man was a bulwark in peace, a titan in war. Bolívar decided he was well worth the bluster and insubordination. “A leader needs to learn how to hear even the hardest truths,” Bolívar ventured to lecture him, sounding less like a commander than an indulgent teacher. But he let the plainsman do as he pleased.

  IF BOL�
�VAR WAS AT ODDS with his two most important generals, he was also wrestling with his own heart. In Bogotá, he had many opportunities to see the lovely Bernardina Ibañez and regret that he had ever released her to her young colonel. He began courting her assiduously again. Even when he departed Bogotá less than three weeks later, he couldn’t help but ponder her attractions. From the relative quiet of Cúcuta, he wrote pleading letters to the girl, venting the full brunt of his infatuation. She was too shy and frightened to respond, but she was also firmly in love with Colonel Plaza. Frustrated by her reticence, astonished by her neglect, Bolívar became insistent, supplicating, redoubling his efforts to win her. To his delight, the young colonel had done something—strayed, misspoken, the correspondence doesn’t make it clear—to break Bernardina’s heart. Knowing how close Santander was to all this because of his ongoing affair with Bernardina’s sister, Bolívar wrote to the vice president, asking for his intercession. “Tell her whatever she needs to hear, including that I’m tired of writing to her without the courtesy of an answer. Tell her that I, too, am a bachelor, and that clearly she interests me more than she interests Plaza, for I’ve never been untrue.”

  In a constant flow of letters about the minutiae of war and the intricacies of managing his officers, a singular portrait emerges, glimpsed only occasionally in the interstices of those idler days: it is the portrait of a lonesome man. Although surrounded by people and difficult demands, he was, as far as love went, as solitary as could be. His mistress of six years was dead. He had heard nothing from the members of his immediate family, who had been scattered mercilessly by war. His oldest sister, María Antonia, a fervent royalist who had stayed on in Havana after her husband died, was at a distance in every sense of the word. Embittered, staunchly antirevolutionary, she had gone so far as to write to the king, asking to be remunerated for her losses and expressing dismay that her brother had reduced the country to “absolute ruin.” Bolívar’s other sister, Juana, too, was a widow, whose republican husband had died defending Maturín against Boves’s forces. The two sisters had lived together for a while in various ports of the Caribbean until 1817, when Juana had sailed up the Orinoco to Guayana, only to learn that she had lost her son, Guillermo, to a battle outside Angostura. His sisters, in short, were little comfort to him now.

  As a result, Bolívar had colleagues, compatriots, and armies that followed and revered him—but precious few intimates. His closest companion in those days of scarce affections was his manservant, the ever constant, much loved José Palacios, to whom he ceded his complete care. It was Palacios who worried over Bolívar’s diet, his sleeping habits, his comforts, his day-to-day exigencies; and it was he who spoiled the Liberator with little indulgences, as a thoughtful spouse might do. One can’t help but see Bolívar straining toward love in a loveless time, especially in his unrequited infatuation with Bernardina.

  Santander dutifully delivered all of Bolívar’s sentiments to the vexed girl and reported back to him: “I have yet to see Bernardina, but I will give her your latest message and you shall have her answer. She has told me a thousand times that there is no woman more confused than she. I haven’t wanted to get caught up in these affairs, but it’s clear that she still hopes that things will work out with Plaza and she mistrusts all the others, including you. Looking at it from afar, the love business doesn’t look too promising.”

  This response may have seemed heartless, but it was true. Bernardina was not inclined to want to commit herself to a difficult, older—and dauntingly famous—man. There were a full twenty years of life separating them, as well as two hundred miles, a world of differing expectations, and a dashing, persistent young colonel. Within the year, Bernardina married Colonel Plaza, and within a year he was dead in battle. In time, she would scandalize Bogotá by bearing a rich man’s illegitimate child. Eventually, she married again; this time, her husband, Florentino González, was a pasty-faced newspaper editor who became a powerful Colombian politician. When González learned that Bolívar had once had a strong romantic interest in his fiancée, he began to nurture a bitter hatred against the Liberator. That hostility would play out soon enough in the annals of Greater Colombia.

  DESPITE HIS DISAPPOINTMENTS IN LOVE, Bolívar now held the future of the republic in his hands. As he sat in his quiet idyll in Cúcuta, planning his next move on Morillo and Caracas, he began to be inundated by managerial problems, all of them requiring immediate attention, decisions, instructions. The army was in disarray; there was much to do. He soon learned that the newly arrived British troops, who had yet to be paid, were being disruptive, refusing to obey orders. “The Irish are like courtesans,” he wrote one of his generals, “they serve you only after the money has crossed hands . . . if you don’t pay, they don’t kill.” Despite the attempt to make light of it, he had no money to give. He had always been able to dig into his own pockets to help pay his soldiers and their widows, but gold and silver were in desperately short supply. It was incumbent on him now to raise it.

  There were other worries. In Angostura, Zea was making alarming mistakes. Precious livestock was being sold off to United States slaughterhouses with no thought of feeding the armies of Greater Colombia. Indeed, in a “diabolical mix of ineptitude and confusion,” as Bolívar recounted to Santander, the patriot government was buying beef back from the United States. Fully convinced now that Zea was more a scholar than a leader of men, Bolívar made him ambassador from Greater Colombia to Britain, where Zea went on to commit other ineptitudes. But Bolívar had more pressing problems as he looked around in Cúcuta: the recruits, guns, bullets, provisions that he had requested had not appeared, and letters he dictated now in a dizzying flurry to his officers were filled with worry. He worried about the slowness of the mails; about putting soldiers closer to Caracas; about how best to develop his talented young officers. Desperate to bring fresh perspective to the table, he made the youthful colonel Antonio José de Sucre—only twenty-five years old at the time—a general; and then, surprising his ranks further, named him his minister of war.

  Bolívar was hardly living the sovereign’s life. His routine was Spartan, his meals frugal. In the mornings, he rose at dawn, tended to his horse, Palomo, and read for several hours before breakfast (largely philosophers, especially Voltaire and Montesquieu). He took his first repast of the day with his war minister, his chief of staff, and his secretary, after which he managed the army’s affairs, issued edicts, wrote articles for the Gaceta, handled diplomatic questions, and fretted over a whirlwind of correspondence. He managed all of this in brisk tempo, dictating to several secretaries, erupting with aggravation if they slowed him in any way or made errors. In the evenings, immediately after dinner, he rode to clear his mind. At night, he conferred with his officers until nine o’clock, when he retired to his hammock and read for another two hours.

  Military efficiency was his obsession. He insisted that citizens of New Granada show their patriotism by supporting the army with cold cash—by raising, at the minimum, 30,000 pesos a month to pay salaries and commission uniforms. He instructed Santander to “squeeze” the provinces for the money. Along with his determination to build an invincible fighting force, the possibilities of a favorable armistice were growing daily. The uprising in Spain and the restoration of the constitution of Cádiz had effectively halted Morillo’s ability to prosecute the war. In an excited letter to Soublette on June 19, 1820, Bolívar reported having intercepted an official communiqué from Madrid that confirmed King Ferdinand’s historic reversal: Spain would send no further expeditions to South America. The soldiers in the port of Cádiz, by their very rebelliousness, had rescued American independence. In yet another letter, Bolívar wrote an English friend exultantly, “Ten thousand enemies were being shipped out against us, and now those ten thousand are our best friends!!!”

  Indeed, a little more than two weeks later, on July 6, Bolívar received a message from Morillo’s right hand, General Miguel de La Torre, requesting a cessation of hostilities. Moril
lo had not known where to find Bolívar, La Torre said, and had written to him at numerous addresses. In the process, the captain-general had sent an envoy to Páez and another to the congress of Angostura, proposing that the barbaric war had gone on too long. His earnest efforts to reach Bolívar made an impression on the Liberator: this was either an elaborate trap or the beginning of the end of the revolution. Bolívar responded to La Torre the next day. “If the object of your mission is anything less than the recognition of the Republic of Colombia, don’t expect me to listen.” But “if Spain intends to treat Colombia as an independent, free, and sovereign state, we can go forward in peace and friendship.”

  A period of negotiation followed, in which Bolívar made it readily understood that Greater Colombia—the new amalgamation of northern Latin America—would never again bow to a king. The colonial era was emphatically over. Morillo, seeking nothing so much as a well-defined door and a graceful way to pass through it, was all too accommodating. He had reasons to be. When he had arrived in Venezuela in 1815, Morillo had married a Cádiz woman, with whom he was deeply in love. But she had remained in Spain; the wedding had been by proxy. In all his five years as a married man, he had yet to join her and consummate the marriage. But Morillo had also been seriously injured in the Battle of La Puerta two years before and had never recovered completely from the lance wound that had almost killed him. Certainly, Morillo could see that there was no future for him in the king’s pacification campaign, but there were other reasons to go home.